Meat or chocolate or alcohol? Something else? What are you giving up for Lent?
I myself have not given anything up for Lent in a long time. Lenten abstinences are common, but not required. Or rather, they are required far beyond the Lenten season. Our call is to love in this world, with all its exhaustion and foolishness, and if we get that right, even a little, it will ask a lot of us. In recent years, my daily life itself has offered a big dose of that, and I have chosen not to add more.
But this Lent, I have found something.
It is important to note that at its core, Lent is not an exercise in self-denial or self-control. It is an exercise in what is traditionally called “detachment,” which is to say a practice of aligning ourselves with reality. It is a way of saying that amidst of all of the complexities, all the disappointments, all the things we might love or hope for, there is one center—God, who is Love and who became Love Incarnate.
The things we give up are not evil in themselves. (If they were evil in themselves, we should not call it fasting, but repentance—and Lent calls for repentance, too, but that’s another post.) No, fasting means turning away from the good things we are tempted to treat as if they could sustain us in an ultimate way. In an embodied way, Lenten fasting helps us remind ourselves that that is a fantasy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with chocolate, other than the fact that it is not God. There is absolutely nothing wrong with eating chocolate, except when we realize it has become more of a dependence than a delight.
Lenten abstinences are an individual matter, requiring self-knowledge and prudential judgment. We are called to search ourselves and to ask which things we are tempted to treat as more valuable than they are, which things to which we are attached in unrealistic and unhelpful ways. And then, we are called to set them aside in an exercise something like physical therapy. This is where self-control and self-denial come in.
If you have ever engaged in physical therapy, you know that it can be painful, indeed. We try to “wake up” certain muscles and subject them to stress, which is the only way to make them stronger. In some cases, we also try to relax muscles that have been overcompensating and threaten to throw the system out of sync.
Ignatian spirituality uses the Latin phrase “agere contra,” to “act against,” for this process. It certainly can feel like a struggle. It is just important to remember that we are not acting generally against ourselves or even generally against our own desires. We are acting against the our lived misconceptions and misplaced loyalties. We are struggling with our tendency to treat as God things that can ultimately only disappoint us.
And so, my Lenten fast. Noticing my tendency to work very hard almost all the time, noticing that I act as if my work and my constant vigilance in making and checking off to-do lists will save me (and also those around me), I have chosen some self-imposed practices of rest. Is it hard? It is. It feels not so much like giving up something, as it does giving up entirely. But if I survive, I am going to try to seriously the evidence offered that Something Else actually sustained me.
Maybe that is a way that you, too, are confusing God and what is not God. If so, I invite you to join me.
rest is revolution ! ❤️
To “take” seriously, maybe? bht